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The one word that holds the secret to your entire existence and this whole universe.
Explore the profound meaning of Tao through Chinese characters and Laozi's teachings to understand reality and personal transformation.
Key Takeaways
- Tao is best understood as awareness in motion, not just a static path or philosophy.
- Reality is created through a four-level process starting from Tao as limitless source to all existence.
- Trying to fix problems at the surface level (level four) without addressing deeper levels is ineffective.
- Wu Wei means taking action without forcing, like water flowing naturally around obstacles.
- Understanding and passing through all three gates is essential for true transformation.
What the video covers
- The video explores the deep meaning of the Chinese character Tao, revealing it as awareness in motion rather than just 'the way' or 'path.'
- It explains Laozi's Tao Te Ching opening warning about the limits of language in capturing Tao.
- The four-level creation blueprint from Tao Te Ching chapter 42 is broken down: Tao to one (source), one to two (Taiji), two to three (polarity), and three to all existence.
- The video highlights how most people try to fix reality (level four) without addressing the underlying levels that generate it.
- The concept of the three gates (Wu Wei, Ziran, and a third often skipped gate) is introduced as a path back to the source.
- Wu Wei is clarified as 'action without forcing,' using water as a metaphor for natural, non-competitive flow.
- The importance of recognizing subconscious patterns running one's life is emphasized, with a free archetype quiz offered for business owners.
- The video stresses the necessity of understanding gate three to hold the first two gates and enable real transformation.
- It encourages viewers to experience Tao directly by focusing on natural pauses in breath and awareness.
- The content blends Chinese esoteric philosophy with practical insights for personal and business growth.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: The Secret Word of Existence
- 01:02Personal Story and Key Warning from Laozi
- 02:21Breaking Down the Chinese Character Tao
- 03:42Conceptualizing Tao as Awareness in Motion
- 04:30Creation Blueprint from Tao Te Ching Chapter 42
- 05:53Understanding Yin-Yang and Polarity
- 06:59Levels of Reality and Their Significance
- 08:12Why Fixing Reality at Level Four Fails
- 09:27Introduction to the Three Gates and Wu Wei
- 11:05Wu Wei Explained: Action Without Forcing
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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And I mean it when I say that. Once you understand it, you understand everything about your reality, where it comes from, and why it keeps repeating.
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The West flattens down into "go with the flow," which is essentially why it never worked for you. So, today I'm taking the Chinese character itself apart piece by piece and then the three gates. And gate three is the one everybody skips, but it
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is also the one holding your life exactly where it is. Once you understand this, you understand everything about reality. Let's get into it.
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I don't even want to erase this, but we've got to get started. Now, I want to tell you a quick thing to hold on to first, basically, because just a few years ago I ran a shop where I literally checked the security camera
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like nobody, like somebody was breaking in, and refreshed the revenue page every couple of hours when I was away.
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Remember that throughout the video, because by the end of this video you will know exactly what was wrong with me and I'll bet a version of it is running to you right now or in you right now.
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Now, before I break down the character, and I mean the actual character as opposed to the coffee mug version, there's a warning I have to give you because Lao Tzu opened the entire Tao Te Ching with a warning and almost
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everybody skips it, and skipping it is exactly what turns this into philosophy as opposed to mechanics. The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.
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That's line one of the whole book and it's essentially a disclaimer. He's trying to tell you up front that every word from here forward is going to fall short because the moment you name this thing, you've turned a living process into a
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dead object. The name itself is a map. And the map was never the territory. The words are a finger pointing at something, and you can study the finger for 20 years and never once look at what the finger is pointing at. So, don't try
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to understand what comes next. Try to recognize it. You have already experienced Tao every single day of your life. You just never had a name for it.
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Now, this is the part that changed my entire perception of reality. Chinese characters are built from pieces, and each piece means something, which means the character for Tao is essentially a diagram. And when you take it apart, it
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shows you exactly what Lao Tzu was pointing at. The character has two components. The first one is chou, so I'm just going to write it down right here. It starts with this.
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This is the first component. Okay? And then, what this means is walk, to walk, or to move. The second one is shou, which is this, right here.
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And this one means head. And head here means the part that goes first, the part that leads awareness, right? So, if you put these two words together, you get the Tao, right? This is the Tao. And this is
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something that most translations completely flatten. You might have heard of the way, the path.
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Fine. It does make sense, but not the entire story. Because the character is essentially drawing you a picture of awareness in motion.
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So, I want you—this is the best way to conceptualize this—is awareness with motion, a path that walks itself.
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Now, I really want you to sit with that for a second because you can feel this one. The Tao is the movement itself, aware of itself in real time.
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Which means you're standing in it right now and you have been standing in it the whole time you were out searching for it.
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You have been swimming in the ocean your entire life while asking somebody to point you toward water.
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So, if Tao is awareness in motion, the next question is what it moves through.
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And Laozi answers that in chapter 42 with an actual blueprint with four sequences from nothing to everything.
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Which is essentially how everything is created in our reality. And this today is a really good one because this is some deep Chinese esoteric stuff that I'm hesitant to talk about because I'm afraid it's too deep, but stuff it. That's a limiting
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belief. And I'm going to try to simplify it as easy as possible. Chapter 42, there's a quote that goes as follows: Tao gives birth to one, one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, three gives birth to all
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existence. Now, I'm going to break it down in a more easy way to understand because when I first looked at this, you might be like, "What the heck is this?" So, one is the source. Tao gives birth to one,
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which is the source. Later, Tao is also called Wuji, which means limitless. No form, no separation, and nothing has carved out yet.
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Now, level two, one gives birth to two, and two is Taiji. Don't worry, I got you covered.
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Taiji is like—it also means obviously the Chinese Tai Chi, but in this context, it means the pivot, okay? And you know, essentially this is like the first stirring inside the stillness.
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You have seen the symbol a thousand times, the yin-yang symbol. I'm going to put it right here. Even I drew it in the beginning. That black and white swirl.
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And almost everyone reads it as balance. It's only part of the story. Look again.
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It's the moment right before separation. The two halves still curling into each other. Now, level three, which we can conceptualize as polarity.
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Or yin and yang. Now, polarity is born at level three. Because full requires empty, hot requires cold, fat requires skinny, rich requires poor.
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Things of that nature. And the friction between them is where the fun starts happening.
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And level four, all existence. Right? So, all existence, obviously it's a lot more than that, but for the context of this reality thing, it already includes everything in our reality.
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Your body, your business, your bank account, your fear of it all falling apart, all of it. Everything you have ever labeled reality lives at this fourth and final level.
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Now, at this point you might ask, "Why the heck does this matter anyway?" Well, everything you have ever tried to fix lives at level four.
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Which is what we call "reality." And you have been trying to fix it from inside level four, you know?
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Stacking strategy on top of strategy while the thing generating all of it sits three levels underneath, completely untouched, quietly running in the background the entire time. The three gates allow us a way back down that map.
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Wu Wei, Ziran, and finally the one nobody gets past, which we're going to get into right now.
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So, the honest question before gate one is what's actually running you at level four. And most people literally cannot answer that because the pattern that's running you is the exact pattern you can't see because you were inside of it.
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It's essentially being zoomed all the way into one item in a photo and trying to describe the whole photo.
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That's why I've built a free archetype quiz for business owners. Takes about 3 minutes, it's free, link in description, and it names which of the eight archetypes the subconscious has been quietly running you through.
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Now, let's get into gate one and two, shall we? Now, let me make some space here. A lot of us always talk about Wu Wei, but Wu Wei is literally gate number one, which means it's kind of a triangle, like a trilogy.
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So, Wu Wei, and the conventional approach to Wu Wei I see is non-action. Like, I'm just going to lay on my couch and life will work itself out.
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Just like how Justin Trudeau said that the budget will balance itself out. Did it? No, it didn't. So, why the heck would this work, right?
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You need to understand Wu Wei is action minus forcing. That pretty much sums it up. Just like water going around the rock as opposed to smashing straight into it.
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Now, why are we always using water? Think about it on a deep level. Sit with it a second. Laozi said the highest good is like water because water benefits everything without competing and it settles into the low places everybody
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else looks down on and that's exactly why it's close to the Tao. It's not the Tao, but it
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where you're forcing right now and you probably already know the spot. The harder you drill straight through that wall with more hours and more caffeine, the more you convince yourself that wall is the problem.
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You're wiped out by 2:00 in the afternoon, 3:00 in the afternoon. You're refreshing something you already refreshed an hour ago and you're calling it discipline day in and day out. Now, chapter 40 has this quote over here in Tao Te Ching and it essentially
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unlocks everything I'm saying here, so stay tuned, right? Chapter 40 says, "Reversal is the movement of the Tao." Everything that expands eventually contracts and everything that peaks turns back, which means your slow month or if you extrapolate this to your life,
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your bad month, bad week is half of a cycle. It's yin and yang doing what yin and yang have been doing in every business and every civilization in recorded history.
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And the more personally you take a contraction, the deeper it buries you at level four, which is what we call our existence reality, and the more you see it as a cycle turning, the faster it turns. Just like how water wears down the rock by
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persisting in its own direction and it never once changes direction to prove a point. The second you stop swimming against the current, the current starts carrying you. The current was always going to carry you.
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You just had to stop swimming against it. Which brings us to gate number two, because way is how you move and Ziran is who you are while you're moving. And this is where it could get uncomfortable for some of you. But hey,
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I know you clicked to hear the truth and you're not a little [ __ ] so here it comes.
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So gate two. Now, don't worry. Of course, I'm going to break it down so easily, right?
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It means naturalness. Naturalness. Now, naturalness really means being exactly what you are without contorting yourself into a costume every morning.
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Because your ceiling is your nervous system set point wearing whatever costume makes sense to you. Your life is running perfectly, by the way. It's running perfectly to a blueprint your subconscious wrote years ago, and that blueprint decides what level of good
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feels tolerable and what level of being seen feels like survival danger. When you get near the edge of that zone, your system drags you back down.
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To back up what I'm saying here, an author that I respect a lot named Gay Hendricks calls it the upper limit problem, which is synonymous with what I'm saying here. You mysteriously lose focus or you sabotage something small at
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the worst possible moment, and you will swear it was bad luck. Except that was your system protecting you.
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Your brain cares about predictability way, way more than it cares about what you say you want.
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You see it clearest around money, especially, because money keeps score. Somebody gives away any margin on a call they had no business discounting. Maybe somebody quietly stops posting the week after the best week, right? Just like yesterday when I went to a vape shop, I
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was like, "Yo, I get 100 for two at somewhere else." And this guy literally folded under no pressure. He's like, "We don't offer that kind of discount, but we could do it." I was like, "Sure, I'll take it. Thank you." He folded, right?
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Now, I'm not trying to shade him, but that is essentially sabotaging action. He's so afraid of losing the deal, losing the business. Same mechanism underneath. And money just where it leaves a receipt. So, this is where the magnet changes everything.
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A magnet doesn't chase metal. It sits there being exactly what it is. And metal moves towards it inevitably, without exception.
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You work the same way in naturalness. Because the truth of the matter is the softest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing in the world. And it wins because it never fights. You know, I think a very, very good example is let's
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say if you're like fighting with your girl. And she's acting soft. What are you going to do? You're going to freaking fold, right? That's naturalness in action. I'm just kidding. The forcing one burns out chasing. The regulated one
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becomes the thing that gets chased. The less you're proving, the more you're receiving. Now, at this point, here's where almost everybody falls off because most people stop at wu wei and naturalness and think they've got it.
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And 6 weeks later, they're forcing again. Sound familiar? Because without gate three, the first two gates have nothing to hold onto.
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And gate three is I'm really not trying to raise this against my own terms, but it sounds funny. It's poo. And this is essentially what we call the uncarved block.
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An uncarved block has raw potential. Like raw potential before society casts its expectations into you.
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On the map, poo is essentially wuji, which is what we call limitless wearing your name.
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Gate three is where you drop below level four entirely. Because on chapter 16, Laozi was able to put everything together.
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I don't want to wipe off this out because I think it's still kind of helpful what I'm saying here. So, I'm just going to add this.
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Now, Laozi has pretty much kind of sums it up in level 40 here. Reach utmost emptiness. Hold firm to stillness. The 10,000 things arises together, and I watch them return.
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Now, I wouldn't want you to read this as a philosophical, oh, this is so deep.
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No, this is mechanics. Read that as a reprogramming instruction because that's what this is.
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Now, your subconscious mind is running an old code, the I'm not good enough script, the I have to prove it script, and you cannot overwrite old code by stacking new code on top of it, which is essentially what every affirmation
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you've ever tried has attempted. You have to empty it first. I cannot stress this enough. Now, run the map top to bottom.
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Right? Run the map top to bottom. The er the things I said earlier. And ask one question at every level.
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What survives? Form? It's gone by level three, what what I mentioned earlier. Polarity? Gone by level two.
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Identity? The felt sense of being separate somebody with a name and a history? It's completely gone by level one.
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Awareness present at every single level. All four levels of the of the doubt all the way down, even in dreamless sleep, awareness is always there. When there's nobody and no mind and no costume and no story, something is still there because every
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time you wake up, you know it was still and something had to be present to register that stillness. That's doubt.
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The one thing in your entire experience that has never once been absent. You have just been so consumed with level four reality that you have never turned around to notice the thing doing all the noticing. And this is what I
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meant at the start. Once you understand doubt, you understand everything about your reality because everything in your reality is either something arising the awareness it's arising in.
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There's no third thing. So, the actual step is this, right? Quite literally. You might ask, what's the next thing to do? Is it to meditate? Is it to affirm?
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Is it to visualize? Is it to put in the more work? Is it to not do anything about it? Is it to whatever?
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None of those is actually going to go deep in the roots and actually solve this problem.
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So, what I really want you to do is quite literally just this and it sounds so simple, yet so many of us are struggled to do this. The beginning to return with the flow, the doubt is quite literally drop everything. Drop
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everything. I mean it. And before your brain panics, keep the business, keep the life. What you're dropping when you do drop everything, right?
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What is included in your everything? The identity, right? You're dropping the identity of someone who is struggling.
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Which goes like hand in hand and align with what I was saying about emptying your cup first. Right?
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Because when you bounce a beach ball underwater, the more you grip it and force it down, the more energy you burn keeping it there. Let go and it rises on its own. Which brings us back to the security camera. That was me gripping
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the boss at level four. And honestly, I was a wreck. Then I let go. I hired more staff. I stopped hovering. I essentially just assumed it was already done. And revenue went up to 800k annually in 2024. And the right
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marketing agency showed up when I was not searching for one. Which is ironic because I spent months searching.
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To back up what I'm saying here, Startup Snapshot surveyed founders in 2023 and 72% said building the startup had damaged their mental health. That's what chronic nature does. Your nervous system cannot sit in survival mode and growth mode at the same time. Because
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forcing is physiologically incompatible with receiving. You can't be sitting and standing at the same time.
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So to sum it up, Wu Wei is a direction. Naturalness who's doing the traveling.
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Right? And pull, this final step, is what stops both from snapping back to the old set point.
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And here's the tool you actually use this week. I invite you to or I'm a dictator, I'm telling you to.
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I'm kidding. You can do it. Up to you, but I generally believe it will work for you.
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When something goes wrong in your reality, maybe it's a deal collapses or somebody ghosts you, ask one question before you react, which level am I standing on on the left on the fourth level?
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Because I call it the attitude check. At level four, that offense a catastrophe about your worth. Drop one level and the same offense becomes contractions. Half of a cycle that has always turned back around. Same event, completely different
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regulation in your nervous system. That one shift in altitude is the difference between carrying something for 3 days and releasing it in 3 minutes.
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Releasing in 3 minutes, usually it lasts longer than that. The thermostat moves because the set point moved.
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Standing there yelling at the thermometer was never going to change the room. And feel free to drop a comment with which level you caught yourself standing on today.
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I read them and I'm assuming level four is going to win by a landslide. Now, you might I I get a lot of people like they're like, "Okay, cool. How do we implement this?" I got you. I got you.
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Just give me 1 second. Just give me 1 second. Like there are certain things that I'm not fast at, you know? So, how do we implement this, right?
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How do we actually put this in a practical sense and apply it? Well, here's what you would do today and it's going to feel small.
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I want you to pick a single place where you're gripping the hardest, right? So essentially you know, I want you to essentially pick a place where you're gripping the hardest.
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Where you just cannot let go. Oh my god, I need my business to do this next month. I need this, whatever.
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Somebody asked me about like SP. Sorry, that's not really in my lane. So, let's focus on the career and mastering own reality.
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Now, you already thought of it while I was talking. For let's say 7 days, okay? Don't touch that lever.
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Don't touch this for 7 days. Don't check the revenue number and don't renegotiate with yourself on day three.
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And to make it easier every morning, literally do nothing and sit for 10 minutes or more because somebody commented, "Oh, 15 minutes and my mind is still racing." Then double down on it.
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And put your attention on the gap, the pause between the inhale finishing and the exhale beginning because that pause held in awareness is literally Tai Chi level two. Experience directly.
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Thoughts will show up. Don't push them out. That's just more force. I cannot stress this enough.
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Watch them arise. Watch them return. Now, I'll be honest, it's not always going to be like, "Wow, everything changed in a week." No, sometimes it just get quieter, but quieter is the first thing that happens before anything moves.
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Everything I just gave you is the foundation and I have essentially got two invitations for you. Number one was the quiz, still free, still in the description. Number two, if you're an entrepreneur or self-employed and you have been sitting at the same ceiling
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for a while and you're honest enough to admit the funnel was never the problem, there's a call link in description.
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Now, before you go, if doubt truly contains everything, then the parts of yourself you have been rejecting were never outside of it. And the more you reject a part of yourself, the more that exact part runs your life on level four.
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And most people have no idea it's happening. So, watch this video next because I'm going to show you why embracing that exact side of yourself is what finally lets everything you have been chasing come through.
Topics:TaoDaoLaoziTao Te ChingChinese philosophyWu WeiTaijiYin Yangawarenessreality
